Morgen in Riesengebirge by Caspar David Friedrich
Sometimes it can be useful to be brief. Last year, the wave of worry, promoted by the Swedish Alberich, without at least the artistic virtue of her deceased compatriot, Birgit Nilsson, stimulated predictions of imminent Götterdämmerung. This virtually Wagnerian kitsch was further dramatised by the pretensious performers of troupes apocalyptical like Extinction Rebellion. As 2019 ended we were all to believe that indeed Valhalla lay around the corner- at least for the sustainable. Instead we should have anticipated the Götzendämmerung. Yet 2020 proved that the idols are worshipped more than ever, albeit with the collusion of the gods.
The general tendency (or intention) to focus public attention on phenomena which require religious faith is a very old means of exerting control and diverting attention from the destructive activities of those in whom control has been concentrated.
The reluctance to attribute climate change to universal — in the sense of phenomena in the universe — processes like solar activity, planetary motion etc. lies in the fact that this would weaken clerical claims to authority (whether as priests or scientists).
By attributing events — most of which we only “know” from mass media depictions — as “climate change” and due to CO2, it is possible to promote a pseudo-scientific argument that implicates the masses without necessarily subjecting the “clergy” to the same accusations. CO2 has the same function as “sin” for the Church. So the rich and powerful can say “we are all sinners” but there are only a few of us and many more of YOU — the masses of CO2 sinners. What is demanded then is submission and penance, while the rich — literally have recourse to indulgences.
The crimes of mass poisoning and destruction of the habitable environment — we need only remember that mega-cities are the product of land theft and wage or other forms of slave labour — are entirely withdrawn from the scope of specific (e.g. class) human responsibility. They become non-events.
Often it is said that climate activists are like religious fanatics. However, to adequately respond to the problem — not merely condemn it — one has to pay more attention to how religion as such functions, especially in a culture polluted by Christendom.
On another level, and levels are always being confused, the demands for less waste and unnecessary consumption — rooted in the Puritan morality of non-conformist clergy — has more appeal given the forty years of declining incomes for labouring people. It suggests to the frugal and ordinary that they could preserve what little they have accumulated if they could only live in an environment where conservation was a generally accepted practice and value. Meanwhile monopolies and cartels — the rulers of the economy — dress their business models in new garb like “sustainability” and “carbon neutrality”. For them sustainability is foremost sustainable profit and carbon neutrality a fiction achieved by trading in environmental indulgences (e.g. emission certificates). Having accrued their tonne of wealth, they would have us believe they will be satisfied with a few tonnes less.
(Well, a tonne of wealth comes from creating several tonnes of poverty too. But that has never stopped anyone interested in wealth for its own sake.)
A few years after the Club of Rome (1968) was founded and began its crusade, a German-speaking engineer was endowed with the resources to begin in 1971 what would become the World Economic Forum (WEF), a kind of ecumenical council for the episcopate and prelates of capitalism. In 1972, the Club of Rome published the eugenic epistel, The Limits to Growth. Soon Klaus Schwab became a kind of permanent prefect of this college of cannibals. One is tempted to say pontiff. His role seems clearly to be that of a bridge between the rapacious, vicious, and obscenely wealthy and those who deliver their messages to the true believers and the masses compelled to be faithful. For nearly 50 years, the pontiff of profit has preached to the flock how they may expect to be sacrificed in future. The most recent version of this message is the encyclical “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
A particularly obnoxious aspect of the WEF theology is implicit in the call for a “fourth” industrial revolution, the blatant disregard for the violence of the previous three. Industrial revolutions were not revolutions so much as they were wars against labour at each time when the risk swelled that such labour would demand its share of the fruits it had produced.
Among others Andre Gunder Frank (e.g. in ReOrient) explained, the so-called Industrial Revolution (the first one) in the Western peninsula, in part, as propelled by a population shortage. In contrast to the centre of human civilisation, Asia, labour was always relatively expensive in what came to be known as Europe (except slaves, whose labour generated much if not most of the capital for the Industrial Revolution). In fact, what we now know as western capitalism and white supremacy are directly related to chronic shortages of reliable (subservient) labour in the West. However, the overproduction that soon resulted regularly from industrial manufacture also required the destruction of competitors and later the inducement to desire rather than need products. Massive industrial strength wars, leading to atomic weapons, were the other means by which profitability was restored and surplus population slaughtered, starved or killed by disease.
The WEF anticipates a “4th industrial revolution” because since the 1950s labour in the West has been considered too expensive at any price. Now having stripped almost all benefits of the wage/ salary and non-wage growth as well as pensions (employees’ deferred income- deceptively called a “benefit” by the State) from the declining labour force, there is a need to redesign industry again to eliminate all but the most essential workers at any educational level. It must be remembered that the WEF represents the pinnacle of profitability and control. The rhetoric of stakeholder v. shareholder notwithstanding, the overall social objective of the class represented in these alpine atrocities is the means by which wealth can be further amassed. It would be more useful to understand “stakeholder” as a reference to those who may be burned at the stake, to sustain the benefits to elite shareholders.
The apparent paradox is that this will eliminate the capacity for consumption and hence an economic model based on low or no consumption is needed in the West.
Hence drug addiction is the best model there is for this kind of economy. The never-ending wars in Latin America, the Middle East and South Central Asia assure the supply of illicit drugs. Expanding the drug addiction beyond narcotics to what might be called “life entitling” substances; e.g., medicines and vaccines, offers the potential to reduce political opposition/resistance while maintaining income streams as the population declines. This was, in fact, the business model of the British East India Company, producing opium in India to smuggle into China. That model has never really been abandoned, merely its legal forms have been changed.
The 4th industrial revolution will be just as criminally violent as the previous three but it will involve applying old techniques — religion and drugs — to subject at least 20-30 per cent of the world population. This is to be eased by the viral and climate crusades designed to prepare the pious masses to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the alpine conclave. The rest of us are just industrial waste, green indeed, like soylent green.